Broadcom introduces Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip for mobile platforms, NFC controller for mobile payments


Broadcom.

Broadcom Corporation today announced BCM43012, its latest and lowest power Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip for mobile platforms and accessories at the CES 2016. It also announced BCM20797,  its highest performing Near Field Communications (NFC) controller. The company’s latest Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip promises 3X longer battery life compared to Broadcom’s previous combo chips. “In some applications, the BCM43012 Wi-Fi consumes 80 percent less power than the most common Bluetooth solutions today,” said the company.

“The BCM20797 helps OEMs to seamlessly and cost-effectively integrate NFC into smaller form factor mobile devices and wearables,” said Broadcom. It also includes an innovative new capability called Virtual Execution Environment (VEE), which improves performance of host card emulation (HCE).

Features of Broadcom BCM43012 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip

  • Highly-integrated 28nm dual-band 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.2 SoC
  • Integrated efficient power amplifiers (PAs), low noise amplifiers (LNAs), and power management unit (PMU) for low rest of bill of materials (RBOM) cost and small system footprint
  • Architectural improvements provide unrivaled low power in sleep and active states for both Wi-Fi and BT
  • Coexistence hardware and algorithms to ensure optimal Wi-Fi and BT performance
  • WLAN features include enhanced proximity and location features enabled by 802.11mc and TurboQAM data rates up to 96 Mbps
    Bluetooth features include angle of arrival (AoA) and angle of departure (AoD) technology, wireless charging support for A4WP and AirFuel, and early adopter 2 Mbps Low Energy protocol capability

Features of Broadcom  NFC controller

  • Supports ISO/IEC 18092, ISO/IEC 21481, ISO/IEC 14443 Types A, B, and B’, Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) (X) 6319-4, and ISO/IEC 15693 standards
  • Improved reader mode range for all tag types with a Tx drive up to 1W
  • Supports Reader/Writer (R/W) mode, Active and Passive Peer (P2P) mode and Tag/Card Emulation mode
  • Enhances Low-Power Target Detection (LPTD) mode and Broadcom proprietary Reverse Low-Power Target Detection (rLPTD) for extremely low average current consumption
  • Supports FeliCa and MIFARE
  • Supports latest NFC forum specifications, NFC Controller Interface NCI 2.0 backwards compatible with NCI 1.1

The Broadcom BCM43012 Wi-Fi/Bluetooth combo chip and the BCM20797 NFC controller are currently sampling to OEMs.


Author: Srivatsan Sridhar

Srivatsan Sridhar is a Mobile Technology Enthusiast who is passionate about Mobile phones and Mobile apps. He uses the phones he reviews as his main phone. You can follow him on Twitter and Instagram